From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!hsdndev!husc-news.harvard.edu!zariski!zeleny Wed Dec 18 16:02:33 EST 1991
Article 2226 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Causes and Reasons
Message-ID: <1991Dec18.082721.6727@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 18 Dec 91 13:27:20 GMT
References: <1991Dec17.033356.22762@oracorp.com> <331@tdatirv.UUCP>
Organization: Dept. of Math, Harvard Univ.
Lines: 73
Nntp-Posting-Host: zariski.harvard.edu

In article <331@tdatirv.UUCP> 
sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:

>In article <1991Dec17.033356.22762@oracorp.com> 
>daryl@oracorp.com writes:

DMC:
>|... However, in order for
>|these limitative results to have any implication for this endless AI
>|debate, you must first have some reason to believe that humans do
>|*not* suffer from these limitations. That is where I part company from
>|Penrose, Lucas, and Searle.  ...
>
>|Assuming that it is possible to program a computer so that it can be
>|consistently interpreted as, say, thinking about cats, there is still
>|the possibility that it can *also* be interpreted as thinking about
>|cherries, or chess, or chemistry. A physical system can be
>|*interpreted* in infinitely many ways.

SF:
>But this is open to the same issue as above.  What reason do we have to believe
>that humans do not suffer from this *same* "problem"?

Introspection, the same faculty that brings you mathematical knowledge.

SF:
>This is, and always has been, my main objection to *all* of the anti-AI
>literature.  It never provides any reason except mere self-generated intuition
>to believe that its arguments fail to apply to humans.

By the same token, all of mathematics rests on a "mere self-generated
intuition". 

DMC:
>|I think that this is a very important point, although it still doesn't
>|prove that AI is impossible, only that it has strange (though not
>|inconsistent) consequences. I'm inclined to just bite the bullet and
>|face up to the possibility (likelihood, in my opinion) that what a
>|*person* is thinking about is not uniquely determined.

I wish you would say more about your rejection of Penrose.

SF:
>Yeah, what I said.

That's your intuition.

SF:
>Or else the non-uniqueness "result" is invalid.
>
>One or the other.  All 'anti-AI' argumants apply to humans!

Nonsense.  If our semantics is indeterminate, than so is the mathematics on
which all your computations rest.  This is a well-known consequence of
empiricism. 

So how come your computers still manage to work?

>-- >---------------
>uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


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